
Title: Disney’s A Christmas Carol
Directed By: Robert Zemeckis
Written By: Charles Dickens (screenwriter Robert Zemeckis)
Release Date: November 6th 2009
Domestic Distributor: Walt Disney Pictures
Cast: Jim Carrey, Gary Oldman, Colin Firth
Rated: PG
Genre: Drama Fantasy Digital Animation
Box Office Information
- Budget: $190,000,000
- Financed by: ImageMovers, Walt Disney Pictures
- Domestic Box Office Gross: $137,855,863
- International box office : $177,853,834
Official Trailer
Synopsis
Well, if you don’t know this story you’ve been living in a cave in Outer Mongolia for the past 190 years. This is a computer animated version of Charles Dickens’ classic tale of the miser Scrooge and how the Spirits of Christmas visit him on Christmas eve to redeem his shriveled soul.
Voices are provided by Bob Hoskins, Gary Oldman, and Jim Carrey, among others.
What the dickens?
The English novelist Charles Dickens was not a very nice chap. He kept his wife pregnant for nearly fifteen years, producing six living children, and when she was played out and her looks began to fail due to the strains of Victorian childbirth and child rearing, he divorced her so he could hang out with the English stage actress Ellen Terry. Whom he never married.
He could be convivial and charming, especially after several trips to the punchbowl, but his terrible temper alienated him from most of his friends, publishers, and business partners over the course of a long and prosperous life.
Having suffered great want and (in his own mind) great humiliation as a child, Dickens expected, and received, big money for his novels, once he became a household word after publication of The Pickwick Papers. He was not so much greedy for money as in desperate need of it to feed his mania to wander. He was forever taking his family and friends to Italy, France, America, and around England and Scotland, on a constant merry-go-round of reading tours or visits to health spas to regain some of the energy he used up in a blaze of activities that ranged from an investigation of the sewers of London to editing and doing most of the writing for several popular monthly magazines.
He was hyperactive, judgemental, and prone to drink too much when in the company of male companions – in other words, a typical Victorian.
This brief character assasination is offered as a contrast to his most famous, at least his most treacly, creation – Ebenezer Scrooge.
It’s a story that no amateur can ever read out loud without breaking into tears and sobbing like a baby near the end of it.
Scrooge’s story, as told in A Christmas Carol, is ageless and timeless. It strikes directly at the heart with all the ferocity of a pit viper. It’s been around so long now that we both love it, and hate it. Like the story of Job in the Bible, every person can relate to it in one way or another – and also scoff at it in disbelief as a creaky fairy tale.
There have been countless versions of A Christmas Carol on the silver screen, on TV, in comic books, and on radio. They none of them have ever done very well when it comes to the bottom line. After all, there is no such thing as a Scrooge Fan Club. As movie fare, Disney might as well have put out a film entitled: “The Rise and Fall of Zanesville, Ohio.” Scrooge is too much a part of us to be of much interest at the box office.
Unless . . .
Scrooge vs Batman?
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Scrooge?
Fifty Shades of Scroogette?
Abbott & Costello Meet Scrooge?
Ebenezer Scrooge of Mars?
Scrooge at Downton Abbey?
Box Office Numbers
With a production budget of $190 million, a worldwide box office percent 1.7 times the production budget, Disney’s A Christmas Carol (2009) took $137,855,863 domestically and grossed $177,853,834 overseas at the box office.
Disney’s A Christmas Carol (2009) played to 3683 theaters and took $30,051,075 (21.8% of total gross) in its opening weekend.
The film played to a total of 3683 theaters domestically and took a domestic share of some 43.7%.
Having ranked number 1 in its opening weekend, and held close to it at 2nd place in its second weekend – running for a total of 13 weeks, with an average weekend domestic gross of $4495 based on a 6.4 weeks average run per theater.
Disney’s A Christmas Carol (2009) was ranked 20 in Top 2009 Movies at the International Box Office with a total lifetime revenue of $177,853,834. All Time International Animated Box Office Rank was 98. All Time International Box Office for Walt Disney Movies rank came in at 100.